


Shackled Souls and Forgotten Flowers

by shadowhuntingdauntlessdemigod



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel & Vessel Interactions (Supernatural), Angst, Endverse!Dean - Freeform, Episode: s05e04 The End, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Lucifer!Sam, Missing Scene, Possession, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26425996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowhuntingdauntlessdemigod/pseuds/shadowhuntingdauntlessdemigod
Summary: Tag to 5x04 The End. “I am the devil, Dean Winchester,” he says as he takes a few steps forward, back straight and domineering. “Did you really think anything made by human hands would be enough to take me off the board?” Lucifer can’t help but smile as from within the recesses of his vessel, Sam Winchester’s weary, tattered soul screams.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26
Collections: Supernatural Summergen 2020





	Shackled Souls and Forgotten Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was written for hootiepgh during the SPN Summergen over on LJ! It was my first time participating and I had loads of fun, there were so many great stories and pieces of art submitted over the summer, and the mods did an A+ job running it! Hootiepgh had prompted a tag to 5x04 The End (which is my third favorite episode ever and it's strange I hadn't written anything for it yet), and I had a great time fulfilling it. Just as a note, I went with season 5 Lucifer as opposed to how he is portrayed/characterized in later seasons. I hope you all enjoy!
> 
> Also massive thank you to bagelcat1 for doing a spectacular beta job! :)

The window in front of Lucifer is caked with dry dirt. Fragments of long-dead vines still cling to the sill. Hands neatly folded behind his back, he moves to one of the panes where the glass has fallen away, allowing him an unbroken view of the world in front of him.

What a world it is. Rather, what a world it will be, once all the humans have been exterminated. The angels are long gone, which has been a relief, and the demons can easily be dealt with. But the humans…their resilience has proved to be a cumbersome annoyance. Not that he doesn’t like making an example of some survivors every so often, but that too grows old.

Still, there is one survivor in particular that he wants, needs, to put to rest.

Dean Winchester.

The single most stubborn man on the planet, the one whom, from Lucifer’s perspective, is to blame for humanity’s current plight. If he had only said yes to Michael those years ago, things would have ended, and it would have been done.

Instead, Lucifer is left making plans to take out a _human._ He could have done it earlier, but it has been fun watching the last remaining Winchester squirm. His Father’s righteous man, clawing and scraping for survival. Dean has reached the end of his rope, he just doesn’t know it yet, and Lucifer is readying the knot to hang him.

Something in the vessel twitches, something Lucifer recognizes as the dim swirls of Sam Winchester’s soul. He hasn’t felt much from the human soul in recent months. Sam acted up much more in the beginning, fought tooth and nail to regain control of his body once he saw that Lucifer had no intention of being kind to the world in Michael’s absence.

Lucifer overpowered him, of course, and locked him away inside his own mind. From time to time he would crack open a window, let Sam see what the outside world had become, and close the shutters again. Perhaps if Sam saw the chaos and disarray that had encapsulated the world, his fighting would cease. If Lucifer wanted, he could hear the younger Winchester’s thoughts, see his angry visage in a shard of broken glass. The thoughts seldom turned into conversations. Heated, virulent phrases and empty promises made up Sam’s part, and Lucifer often had more important matters to attend to than listening to the vessel’s host.

He had told Sam initially that he wanted the boy to be happy. Maybe there once was a scenario where things could have been somewhat peaceful between them. But as soon as Dean refused Michael and it became clear that the apocalypse would not come to pass, Lucifer decided to make the most of his time on the planet. When Sam didn’t take kindly to his intentions, Lucifer’s concern for the human’s satisfaction diminished to nothingness.

So no, Lucifer had not taken Sam’s gag off in a long, long time. With that period came a gradual lessening of the fights, and soon the raging fire of rebellion had become nothing but an ember or two.

Those embers always seemed to flare whenever Dean came into the picture. Why, Lucifer could only guess. The lies, the betrayal, the fact that Sam said yes to the devil in the first place, he couldn’t really expect that his big brother would actually come to save him, not after all this time. He couldn’t still harbor emotions towards Dean. There was no purpose.

And yet still, he can feel Sam’s soul straining against the shackles around it for the first time in close to a year. He poses no threat to Lucifer’s control now, and hasn’t for a long time.

“We’ve got a show coming up for you, Sam, just you wait,” Lucifer says, allowing Sam to hear him as he continues to look out the window at the world that has fallen under his hand.

_“What do you mean?”_ His voice is quiet, broken. It makes Lucifer smirk.

“Have the past five years taught you no patience?” And just like that, he closes the doors around Sam’s soul.

Lucifer walks back to the center of the room where a desk lies forgotten and ruined. This was likely once a head office in the sanitarium. It pales in comparison to a throne room, but for this excursion it will have to do. A simple painting hangs crooked on the far wall. It is worn and dirty, as the years have not been kind, but Lucifer can still make out some red strokes on what used to be white canvas.

Creativity. He has to give his Father some acknowledgment for bestowing that on the humans. If nothing else, what they can build with basic materials is the closest they will ever get to a miracle.

A demon walking into the office interrupts Lucifer’s thoughts.

“They have the Colt?” he asks without turning away from the painting.

“Yes, my liege, just as you had planned. But we lost seven-“

Lucifer cuts him off. “And Halphas conveniently let our plan slip when he was captured previously?” He already knows the answer, but it does not hurt to go over the details.

“After he was tortured, yes. The humans should be here tomorrow, assuming they come as soon as they are able.”

“They will.” There is not an ounce of doubt in his voice. The opportunity to kill the devil himself? There is no reality that exists where Dean Winchester would not take the shot as soon as he is able. Lucifer turns from the painting, brushing a fallen piece of grey dust off his white suit as he does so. The world is quite literally disintegrating around the humans, and they still refuse to see that they have been beaten.

“Clear a path for them. The demons, the infected, they are all to be gone from the streets before the humans arrive.”

Sitri, the demon that has brought the update, looks uncertain in his meat suit.

“Something the matter?” As Lucifer asks it, three more demons shuffle in from outside the office. They settle at attention around the door.

“No, sir,” Sitri quickly tries to cover.

Even after all this time, some of them still think he won’t notice the seeds of doubt creeping through them. Lucifer takes a few steps closer to the demon. “It would be wise to answer with some modicum of honesty.”

Sitri, to his credit, swallows and thinks about his next answer. “It’s just…we could take them sir, very easily, and not lose any more soldiers like we did today. Why give them the Colt and then lead them here?”

“You would doubt my judgement?”

That freezes Sitri in his tracks. The temperature in the room drops as the suggestion is made. If one were to look at the windows, it is possible that some flakes of ice might be seen crawling their way across the glass.

“No, no, of course not,” he runs together quickly.

Lucifer just shakes his head in disappointment. “Hope is what these insects thrive on. It clouds their judgement, impairs their reason. Tomorrow they will come, and they will be slaughtered. And it will be a message to all,” he locks eyes with each demon in the back of the room as he does so, “that their lives are in my hands. That they are alive in my world for only as long as I allow it.”

He takes a breath and straightens his suit before he stares down Sitri, who is nearly shaking in his black dress shoes. The demon can tell that there is more on the devil’s mind, and the extra pause allows for more fear to curl in and around Sitri’s twisted soul.

“I do not allow lies or doubt in my court, Sitri. You will serve as a similar warning for your own kind.”

Sitri opens his mouth to protest, to plead for his existence, but Lucifer raises his arm in a fluid motion and snaps his fingers before a second has passed. Sitri crumbles to dust in front of him, joining the decrepit mess that already covers the floor of the sanitarium.

He cracks the window inside the vessel open again, just enough so that Sam will be able to hear.

“A warning to you all,” Lucifer reminds. He uses all of Sam Winchester’s nearly six and a half feet of height to tower over them. “Clear the way. The humans are not to be harmed until they are onsite.”

“The fallen angel Castiel should be with them,” one demon, Mastema, supplies. Her eyes are downcast to the floor, a picture of complete and utter submission. Perfect.

“He is of no matter. He will be dealt with as will the rest of the humans.”

“And Dean Winchester?” she asks, not changing her position.

If Sam were still in control of his heart, Lucifer can tell that it would have sped up considerably with concern. But he isn’t, so Lucifer has to settle for the way the human’s soul tenses instead.

Lucifer smirks. “Leave him for me.”

* * *

Over the course of the night, the demons clear the streets of the infected and then make themselves scarce.

Sam Winchester’s soul has not stopped tensing and fighting its bonds as the hours have passed. Somehow, he knows that his brother is in real danger this time. Not that there is anything he can do to stop it.

Lucifer keeps his vigil over the damaged sanitarium grounds. Nothing in the city shines in the darkness. There are no specks of yellow light coming from buildings nor the white and red lights that used to adorn working vehicles. The absence of light has made room for stars, though the devil pays them no mind.

“Your continued struggle does you no good, Sam,” Lucifer reminds. He lets Sam see through his eyes at the devastated world, hear the stillness in it that is only disturbed by an animal in the rubble.

_“You expect me to just stop?”_ comes the reply.

Lucifer shakes his head, knowing Sam can feel it. The muscles he used to control, the gestures he used to make. All controlled now by the puppet master with the soul that resides in the strings.

“We would both be better off for it, but no, I don’t.” The devil lets out a sigh. Once Dean is gone, Sam should quiet, hopefully for good, and see the futility of his attempts at rebellion. Why does he even try now…he supposes it couldn’t actually hurt to ask the human. “Why do you still care for Dean?”

Once again Sam tenses, and Lucifer can feel the anger his soul gives off.

“It has been years. He called you a monster, blamed you for the apocalypse, abandoned you, and is now actively looking to end me with you attached.”

Lucifer knows he makes good points. Even an emotional creature like Sam has to see the rationality in it.

_“He’s still my brother,”_ Sam says quietly.

“I understand that. But this deep seated devotion, there’s no logic in it, not anymore.”

The human soul shackled inside its own chest seems to laugh. In a reflective piece of glass, Lucifer watches as Sam shakes his head.

_“Logic doesn’t matter. That’s what you angels and demons never seem to get. What you said is right…to a degree, but there’s more than just that. There’s a lifetime of relationship, a bond. Nothing can completely strip that away.”_ Sam pauses and seems to look right back at Lucifer through the window pane. _“I’d take that as a warning that if anything happens to my brother, you’ll pay.”_ He seems so sure of it, too.

But now it’s Lucifer’s turn to smile and shake his head. “That’s where you’re wrong, Sam. With Dean gone, you will have nothing to fight for and you know it. The world is damned, it’s just a matter of how long it takes to become mine completely.”

_“You won’t win.”_ Lucifer can hear the anger, see it in the way Sam sets his jaw and rolls his shoulders back.

Lucifer just regards him with an amused tilt of his head. “I won the second you said yes. You couldn’t stop me then, and you won’t now. So I’d suggest quelling your little rebellions before I do it for you.”

With a blink the window in front of him shatters, as does Sam’s distorted visage.

In the absence of Sam’s pitiful warning, peace has again returned to the world. Lucifer knows that given the new day’s inevitable success, peace will be assured in the long term as well.

* * *

“Sir.” The demon comes up behind Lucifer and stands a respectable, terrified distance away. Lucifer doesn’t turn from where he has positioned himself this morning, looking out over the garden that has fallen into disarray in the absence of humans. Leaves and husks of flowers litter the ground and yet a lone bush of roses still blooms.

“I take it they’re on their way in?”

“Yes sir. Dean Winchester, Castiel, and two or three others.”

Lucifer raises his head to look at a rose on top of the bush, stretched out above the others to catch the sun. “Good.” He takes in a long breath. “Separate Winchester from the group, if he does not do it himself. He will find me.”

“There’s something else too, sir.”

Now that gets Lucifer’s attention. He turns around to find Mastema standing almost at attention, looking nervous as to the message she’s about to deliver. Lucifer only tilts his head as an acknowledgement to continue. “There are…two Dean Winchesters. The one, outfitted as we’ve noted in the past, but the other, well we don’t know what to make of it.”

What to make of it, indeed. Sam isn’t privy to this conversation, so he doesn’t react, for the better. Lucifer will get to the bottom of it in time. One Dean will likely tag along with the other, and he wasn’t intimidated by one, so two will do little to worry him.

“The plan remains the same. I will deal with any abnormalities.” His word is final.

Mastema nods quickly and, having delivered her message, scurries back to her post to await the attack.

Two Dean Winchesters…fascinating. What was it the humans said? Two for the price of one? Yes, he will relish in ending each one, should the occasion permit. And if itserves his purposes to dispose of only one, then he will make sure the other remembers his counterpart’s demise.

He does not have to wait long for the shooting to start inside the abandoned complex. Guns will do little against his demons, so the fight is futile. A welcome distraction, though, for his minions, and it leaves Lucifer completely defenseless to the untrained eye.

Which is why Dean Winchester, the one he is familiar with, comes right for him. As soon as Lucifer senses his presence, he flings open the shutters to Sam Winchester’s soul. Blinds him in the light of what will become his brother’s final moments.

When Lucifer turns, Dean already has the Colt trained on his skull, finger on the trigger. He’s hesitating for a microsecond, and Lucifer is about to use it against him.

“Dean,” he whispers. It’s a fairly good impersonation of Sam, if he must say so himself. The elder Winchester has been a nuisance for years now, so Lucifer doesn’t mind playing games with him. He deserves it for being so stubborn, the epitome of everything he despises about his Father’s creation.

Dean doesn’t say anything, but Lucifer watches as his jaw clenches hard enough to crack teeth. It’s hard to tell from across the small courtyard, but his eyes seem to glisten when lightning flashes across the darkened sky. Remorse, really? Sadness for killing the brother he abandoned?

Sam senses it too, screams at his brother to shoot and run, but of course Dean can’t hear him.

He fires anyways.

The Winchester’s aim is good and true and hits Lucifer square in the forehead. He stops the bullet before it does any real damage and for a second considers falling to the ground to keep up the charade. But then he’d have the bother of cleaning his suit with his powers later, and this day is enough of an annoyance already.

Instead, he lets the impact spin him around to face the building and remains standing.

Sam’s soul inside him is completely still, waiting for death, waiting to see if the bullet will free him from his shackles. Neither happens.

As soon as Lucifer feels the skin reforming around the wound, he turns back around and smirks at Dean. The diminishing red on his forehead must stand out against Sam’s skin and white suit. It will be gone in moments, no lasting reminder of Dean Winchester’s failure to save the world. Pity.

Dean shakes himself out of his stupor rather quickly and readies for another shot. Before he can pull the trigger, Lucifer flicks forward with his fingers and the gun tumbles to the ground.

“Dean, Dean, Dean. All this time to get ready and you didn’t do your research?” Lucifer makes a tsk-ing sound. “That’s what Sam was for, I suppose, before you abandoned him and sent him running to me.”

“Don’t you dare,” Dean grinds out. His teeth and jaw are still locked together. From the back of his jeans he pulls the demon killing knife, which Lucifer simply flicks away too. It’s tiring, really, but not unexpected.

Dean finally looks surprised at that, all his supposedly useful weapons lying ineffective amongst broken stone and dead flowers. He returns his gaze to match Lucifer’s and yes, he can see the tears now. Of anger, heartbreak, or hopelessness, he does not know, and frankly does not care. The time for games is over.

“I am the devil, Dean Winchester,” he says as he takes a few steps forward, back straight and domineering. “Did you really think anything made by human hands would be enough to take me off the board?”

Sam yells at Lucifer now instead. To stop, please, to turn around. He can see where this is going, Lucifer advancing on his defenseless brother.

“Had to have faith in something, right?” Dean stands his ground, all false bravado and sharp attitude in the end. He has nothing else left. No weapons, no friends, no family, no hope.

Lucifer tilts his head. “Funny, it wasn’t your brother.”

Dean seethes at the comment. “Sam,” he gets out quietly, “if you’re in there, I’m sorry.”

Lucifer only chuckles. Sam hears the comment, of course, and fights to respond, but his will is atrophied after all these years. He, like his brother, stands no chance. “He’s in here alright. Chained and shackled like all you humans should be.”

Dean closes the distance between the two of them and sends a fierce blow towards Lucifer’s skull. The devil blocks it easily, and slides out of the way of the knee kick Dean goes for next. He grabs the hunter’s still extended arm and twists it around to wrench it painfully behind him. Dean struggles, every movement pulling on the cramped elbow joint, until it becomes clear that Lucifer has him pinned.

“Now, Sam,” he addresses the soul in his chest out loud so that Dean can hear too, “look upon your savior. The man for which you held out unreasonable hope. Your family, your flesh-and-blood brother, that would rather let you go than help you.”

Dean can’t say it isn’t true because it is, and Lucifer knows it, having gone through every single memory in Sam’s head.

“I regretted it the second I did it, Sammy,” Dean whispers in a pained voice.

“ _I know you did,”_ is Sam’s silent, broken internal reply.

“And yet you did nothing to remedy it until it was too late. You two have each done your fair share in damning the world, I must commend you on that.” Lucifer wrenches Dean’s arm up further, eliciting a groan of pain from the man. He is forced to stand on his toes to compensate for Sam’s extra height. “But you have been an annoyance for far too long. Perhaps with you gone, Sam will finally learn that it is hopeless.”

“ _No, Lucifer! He’s got no defenses. Let him go! If you hurt him I swear-“_

“Swear to what, Sam?” Lucifer says silently to the soul writhing in his mind. “I’m in control. Maybe after this you’ll finally get the message.”

It’s a futile attempt from within his own psyche. So futile, that Lucifer has to chuckle.

“Your brother seems to think you’re a coward, Dean, that without weapons you’ll stop the fight. I think we all know better,” he says aloud to the struggling Winchester.

He easily pushes downward and maneuvers so that Dean is on his stomach with Lucifer’s crisp white shoe on his neck. A small amount of power holds him in place, the foot is for extra emphasis.

“How does it feel to know that your brother counted on you all these years against all reason to save him, that your friends did too, and yet here you are?”

Dean doesn’t dignify him with a response, just squirms on the ground in a hopeless attempt to break free. Sam, similarly, is straining against his bonds with a strength that Lucifer hasn’t felt since he first possessed the vessel.

He increases the pressure ever so slightly, enough that it starts cutting into Dean’s air supply. Sam is forced to listen as his brother chokes for breath, hands waving to find something, anything that may be able to help him.

There is nothing.

“Goodbye, Dean Winchester,” is the simple final formality that Lucifer grants the speck of stubborn rebellion.

Sam fights to regain control of a leg, an arm, a finger, something, but Lucifer’s hold doesn’t waver for a second. Maybe once upon a time Sam’s will would have stood a chance, but not now. Not after years kept as a prisoner inside his own body. Lucifer keeps the blinds open so Sam can see everything.

The dullness of the world around him, the storm brewing above, his brother’s scars and tattered clothes. Dean’s face is mostly hidden by the ground and the white shoe, but after a few seconds Dean flicks his eyes up as far as they will go and Lucifer catches a fleck of bloodshot white and green.

Mostly still defiant. Just a touch scared. Filled with remorse.

It’s too late for emotions now.

The devil shifts the position of his foot on Dean Winchester’s neck. He applies more pressure, pushes it forward slowly with a crack and…

Lucifer can’t help but smile as from within the recesses of his vessel, Sam Winchester’s weary, tattered soul screams.


End file.
